Global geospatial coordinate formats are well known and heavily used to identify a global position. The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based satellite navigation system that provides location anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to GPS satellites. The system provides critical capabilities to military, civil and commercial users around the world. It is maintained by the United States government and is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver.
The ability to accurately determine a location relative to known global positioning coordinates enables access to relative information such as mapping and business locations. For example, mobile mapping global positioning systems display current location relative to street maps, suggest a route to a destination, calculate a time of arrival and allow a user to locate areas of interest relative to the current geospatial position of the device.
A point of interest (POI) is specified by the latitude and longitude of the POI, assuming a certain map datum. For example, a POI may have its latitude and longitude representative in units of degrees with decimals such that its GPS Position is: 57 deg 38′ 56.83″ N, 10 deg 24″ 26.79″ E. Geo tagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though they can also include altitude, bearing, distance, accuracy data, and place names.
Historical records have been traditionally presented based on subject, event and/or time. Easily accessed database resources operate on the assumption that a user has a known subject to be researched. Likewise, historical texts and databases are resources available once a topic of interest has been identified. Unfortunately a large amount of historical data has been essentially lost or not readily available because it is not easily associated with general areas of interest. Improved systems, methods and data structures are needed to provide temporal data.